Always 1895
by flying-chipmunk
Summary: Unbeknownst to each other, two doctors - of varying type - ponder the same fateful event. One offers a story of friendship, the other a silent salute. But both think of time.


Hey, I know I've been mysteriously inactive for a while now, though if any of you follow me on tumblr, I have posted some brainstorming stuff for _A Study in Gold and Scarlet_. Call this me trying to kill some writer's block so I can end my awful hiatus and get you some more _ASiGaS_. Inspired by the events of the Series 7 finale and the mysterious status of Holmes in the Whoniverse - the writers can't seem to decide it he's fictional or not!

* * *

It always starts with the detective. The other two, of course, surface later - one pulling the strings long before it's obvious, the second remaining under the radar until he makes a remarkable acquaintance - but it always starts with Holmes. Clearly some disruption to the flow of time, but what? They are not like Clara, a face strewn across a dozen times, places, and ideas; rather, _they_ are a time. An idea with a dozen faces. An unbreakable trinity forever trapped in time and space.

But the Doctor can't imagine why.

John Watson doesn't remember who he is. Not really. It's not so bad, seeing as he doesn't usually know it, but the dreams... the dreams are confusing. Sometimes when he sleeps, he thinks of whatever incarnation of war he found himself in this time. Sometimes he recollects their past adventures, in other lives. Tales he doesn't realize he has lived.

And sometimes he thinks of the Fall.

The Doctor can remember the first time his own convoluted time stream crossed with that of what he refers to as "the Holmes enigma". They reared their head in 1889, when he encountered the detective and his loyal doctor in Dartmoor. He was many regenerations younger, investigating rumors of a giant hound with Sarah Jane. Their search itself had been disappointing - no signs of alien life in the slightest - and the duo they'd briefly encountered similarly noteworthy.

He assumed he'd never see them again.

John has seen many falls - they plague him era after era. But the only of significance was the first. The _real_ Fall. The one that left him, his detective, and their mortal enemy forever falling, falling through the fabric of time and space.

Always falling.

It's harder to pinpoint when something seemed wrong about them. Obviously, it was when they reappeared, but with the inconsistency of time present in his own travels, he has no date to put with the faces - whichever ones they were. Since that day, the Doctor has seen a hundred iterations of them. Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty - an unbreakable braid, invincible to even the wear and tear of the passing ages. Sometimes they appear in the past. Sometimes in the future. Sometimes in their original era, with different faces, different crimes, and different personalities. If he were not the last of the Time Lords, he'd think he'd found his own kin; regenerating from age to age in a never-ending struggle.

And yet they are so very, very human.

Falling. It's really not such a bad feeling. Not as bad as one might be lead to believe, at the least. Not when you've been doing it for hundreds of years. At least... John thinks it's been centuries. It's become hard to keep everything straight, considering his moments of clarity are deeply embedded in the subconscious. When he dreams of the Fall. Occasionally, he sees the image his brain has constructed from Sherlock's note - two men, trapped in each other's holds, wrestling over the edge of those fateful cliffs and into the roaring, churning waters of the Reichenbach. But that is only a construct. His true memory, his memory of the true Fall, is more real. More painful.

And infinitely more loyal.

He knows for a fact there are places where time is broken. As a Time Lord, he knows them for what they are - some of the strangest and most powerful places in the universe. And dangerous. Rifts, streams, cracks - they are scattered from place to place, hidden traps for the unsuspecting. The Doctor assumes that one of these is responsible for their appearance. And he can't help but feel somewhat sorry. Could he have closed it? Could he have saved them from this fate?

Could he have done something?

The Reichenbach falls don't look inherently evil. In fact, they aren't the most impressive waterfall he's seen, especially after all these time and places. But they are the most dangerous. For some reason, the falls are a place where time fails to exist. Their swirling waters are a gateway that steals all that is sure, all that is fixed, and tears it to pieces. It pulls it from you and scatters you in a million places. And yet concentrates you in one - you live a single life, with human struggles, human fears, and human weaknesses - but they never end. Each individual story bleeds into another, where you start anew. No memories of anything past. Unless you're John, it seems.

He wonders if anyone else dreams.

The Doctor has picked up on the things that remain the same. It's clearly no coincidence that their paths collide so often. He's never met a man drawn to the unusual, the strange, the mysterious as much as himself. But Sherlock Holmes comes the closest. He is also hard-pressed to come up with a being as calculating as James Moriarty - though his personal foes put up a fight. There is, of course, competition. But one thing is sure, despite the many companions of his own he's run with.

He'd be surprised if he met a being more loyal than John Watson.

It was a rainy winter evening, several months after the detective's original return to life, when Holmes had confessed the truth about his hiatus. It was not an event of the natural variety. Something was broken, terribly horribly broken, and there was likely no way to fix it. He told John of a terrible Void, seeing it for a moment and suddenly finding himself wandering aimlessly through time. Lost. For three year's on John's side, ten on Sherlock's. Impossible. It was a rare moment of "sentiment" when he divulged his fear: that this was not an exceptional event, but the beginning of a pattern. So rarely did he talk of feelings, and yet this one would not leave him. But it seizes John with a different conviction. Because he had just seen the detective at his most vulnerable.

After being so very alone.

The Doctor would love to solve the enigma, like one of Sherlock's own cases. Logically analyze their existence, learn where they came from, and put the mystery to rest. But he cannot. Once you eliminate the impossible, as the detective says, can you find the truth. But when there is only the impossible, you can eliminate nothing. This _should_ be an impossibility.

When the impossible takes over, what _then_ is true?

It is a horrible feeling, to stand on the edge of all that you know and cherish, ready to plunge into a world from which you can never return. And all for the sake of another. But John embraces it. If he refuses, no one will do it. Sherlock will be alone. Forever. And he can't let that happen. It is only shortly after his friend's death - his disregard for personal health having ensured that, while he lived a long enough life, it was shorter than the doctor's. This life, at the least. Not knowing how much time remains for him as well, he makes the trip to Switzerland one more, equally fateful time. He has made up his mind. And as he leaps into the waters himself, he is surprised at the lack of regret.

Mostly, he hopes he is correct - that fate will be kind and allow them to meet again.

The Doctor knows well what it means to be a lonely traveller. Of lasting for countless ages, no longer surviving but _enduring_. Barely. And so there is little more he'd rather do than take them home. Take the doctor, the detective, and even the criminal where they belong. Forever. But deep inside, he has a feeling that he cannot. Their time streams are like his, doomed to exist on and on and never grow old - not until the time is right. They are a balanced equation, the three of them, and they must perpetually cancel each other out. He find it somewhat fitting though, that the nobler thirds are so close to himself. Or who he'd like to be. They may be two people, instead of one, but they are dedicated to righting wrongs and share the quick wit and the healing hands between them. And so he honors them how he can. When he wears a deerstalker, when he uses a name, he does not do so idly. He remembers. He sympathizes. He gives his silent salute.

Because he knows the meaning of sacrifice.

John knows Sherlock doesn't remember. Even in his dreams. He'd never told the detective what he was about to do. Now he never could. And John knows what that means. He will never be thanked. Never have his choice acknowledged as brave or right or loyal. Never be able to see the look on his friend's face if he were to realize - as a strange a touching emotion as it would be to see it on Sherlock's face. But that's okay. Because if Sherlock Holmes is doomed to spend eternity hurtling through space and time, trapped in a never-ending battle of wits with the greatest criminal mastermind of all time, he doesn't want him to do so alone. He wants him to feel the value of companionship. To understand that he has a friend. And that friends are a better protector than solitude. Because whatever he is - mistake, fluke, problem, enigma - whatever he has doomed himself to be, he has become so much more - doctor, soldier, friend, blogger, Boswin.

And Sherlock would be lost without him.

* * *

_"221B"_

_Here dwell together still two men of note_

_Who never lived and so can never die:_

_How very near they seem, yet how remote_

_That age before the world went all awry._

_But still the game's afoot for those with ears_

_Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:_

_England is England yet, for all our fears–_

_Only those things the heart believes are true._

_A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane_

_As night descends upon this fabled street:_

_A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,_

_The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet._

_Here, though the world explode, these two survive,_

_And it is always eighteen ninety-five._

_-Vincent Starrett_


End file.
